Remember the format wars? Ars looks back at the heated battles between VHS and …

No, it's not reality television versus talk shows, or Top 40 radio against "the best of the '80s—and more!" The wars I'm thinking about pit technologies against one another, usually in a battle to the death of one or more of the contestants. It's One format to rule them all every time, and the streets are littered with the remains of the losers.

These wars are loathsome because we consumers have to pick a side or else lose out on something awesome, and then the ones who picked the wrong one have to pay up again for the winning technology. But format wars also keep the carousel of progress spinning and fan the flames of innovation. Join me for a brief look back at the format wars of yesteryear, and a look ahead at what will replace them.

Betamax v. VHS

Let's start with some well-known and fairly recent history. Sony launched the home video revolution in 1975 with the Betamax tape format; the company asked Japan's Ministry of Trade and Industry to make Beta an official standard with government backing, but JVC refused to play ball and introduced its own VHS system a couple of years later. The rest, as they say, is history. But why did VHS tapes kill Betamax?

It wasn't because VHS was technically superior—Betamax tapes started out with slightly higher resolution than VHS, and less video noise as well. Also, Sony's more sophisticated lacing system (the way the tape winds between guides and read/write heads in the player) allowed Betamax to pull off a few tricks that early VHS players couldn't duplicate. You could fast-forward or rewind Beta tapes without losing the picture, for instance, and video editing on a Beta system produces cleaner cuts.

JVC's format roared onto the market with a couple of distinct advantages, though. Chief among them was the ability to record two hours of NTSC-encoded video versus one hour for Betamax.

American consumers seemed to be more interested in long recordings than good-looking ones, and VHS quickly gained the upper hand in the US market. Sony fought back with thinner Beta tapes and slower tape speeds, extending the play time at the expense of picture quality, but JVC and a host of allies had already turned their short-lived tape length advantage into economies of scale. The rich get richer, and mass-produced video players get cheaper; soon enough, the technical superiority of Betamax mattered not a whit and VHS scored an 85% global market share by 1986.

In 1988, Sony started to make VHS players and Beta was left to die on the vine. The Video 2000 system from Philips, which also was arguably better than VHS but also more costly, never gained traction and sunk without a trace. At best, V2000 was about even with the already-dying Betamax at 7.5% market share each. The war was over by then.

So why was this war ever started? If JVC hadn't decided to go its own way, Betamax would have won by default. Short of a customer revolt, video tapes would then have been stuck with one hour of high-quality video signal for years. The series of compromises from both the Betamax and VHS camps that finally produced 10-hour recording times with very, very lossy quality might or might not have happened, and at any rate would have come about at a much slower rate.

Early adopters of both VHS and Betamax shelled out $1,000 or more (in 1980 dollars—over $2,400 when adjusted for 30 years of inflation) for their fancy new technology, and some of them ended up with expensive paperweights. But the rest of us ended up with better and cheaper players, packed with features designed to outdo the opposition. All told, the VHS-Betamax war was more good than bad for the average video watcher.

DVD, HD DVD, and Blu-ray

When DVD players started showing up in American living rooms, the VHS incumbents crawled out with nary a fight. DVD versus VHS was less of a war than a wholesale slaughter, and the age of magnetic video tapes ended with little fanfare in 2006 when the last major studio powered down the tape machines. That was allegedly the William Hurt vehicle "A History of Violence," filmed in 2005 but released on DVD and VHS in March, 2006. Thanks for the memories, Bill.

Early reviews for either format were not overly positive. My colleague Nate Anderson summed the situation up thusly: "The consensus seems to be: unless you need it now, you're better off waiting a year. Prices will be down, quality will be up, and features will be multiplied. You'll also have a lot more content to watch on your shiny new device."

Nate was absolutely right, of course. Sony launched the PlayStation 3 in time for the holidays, and that console is still the leading Blu-ray player on the market with over 24 million systems sold. Early high-def disc players could only display 1080i video, but full-on 1080p hardware was not far behind. Toshiba presented a triple-layer HD DVD format that evened up the data storage capacity between the two combatants.

And of course, prices fell through the floor. You can get a refurbished Blu-ray player today for about $110, which is better than 90% off from the debut hardware.

While the Betamax-VHS bout lasted for more than a decade, the fat lady sang for HD DVD only 18 months after the inital hardware launch.

99 Reader Comments

Besides the afore mentioned issues with digital distribution with drm, non-transferability, and ISP bandwidth caps there is also the issue of quality.

Pretty much every digitally distributed encoding produced by a studio looks like crap compared to the pirate encoding. Until the studios can take a cue from the people who have been encoding movies for 20+ years and produce a product with better/equal quality in the same size as pirates its still going to look like crap.

Leaving alone that comparison, I was under the impression that the majority of digitally distributed HD releases today dont even include DD5.1 let alone any of the actual HD audio codecs. The lack of hd audio with the lack of bitrate compared to physical formats is what kills it for me. So until we have insanely fast non-capped broadband in the US digitally distributed video seems like a pipe dream for anyone that cares about watching a quality product.

I couldn't disagree more. The BDs of North By Northwest, The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind are a clear leap in clarity over their DVD equivalents. I'm surprised this is even up for debate.

The only sticking point - and it's a fair one - is whether you are willing to shell out extra for a HDTV, a BD player and the extra cost of the BDs themselves. Each to their own.

I agree - i was lucky to grab a 50 inch Kuro for $2000 an Elite receiver for around $600 and now the PS3slim for $300 - throw in about $1500 for good speakers and a sub and you'll be damned to have much of a better experience no matter how much more money you throw at your system..

but that still is around $4500 on the cheap which is way too much for people who are thinking netflix is costly. so they will just upconvert DVDs to their $400 32 inch tvs with content that is as cheap as possible

Upconverting DVD players are swiftly becoming the norm, and it takes a very large screen or a curmudgeonly eye for detail to tell the difference between upconverted DVD and straight-up Blu-ray content.

It is funny that Sony's PS3 is one of Bluray's biggest foes as it is one of its champions.

The PS3 is an EXTREMELY competent upscaling DVD player: I thought that the talk about upscaled DVDs was bullshit until I experienced this with my own eyes; Blueray disks DO look better, but DVDs upscaled by the PS3 look absolutely fantastic.

In Spain, the PS3 is the only online, on-demand netflix-like operator! I find the rental fees very reasonable at 2-3€, although the catalog is very short, not very exquisite, and movies are short on features -- no original soundtracks or subtitles (only 2ch stereo spanish dubs), and none of the other usual extras (though I don't miss those anyway). The video store interface needs a lot of improvement, too.

I also think somewhere in the Blueray specs it is said that good movies cannot be made available in the format. A trip to the blueray aisle shows almost only high testosterone shit hits, or high glam ultrasweet romantic comedies. And the prices! They are outrageous, for the small benefit.

In all, since I have my PS3, I have bought three BD movies, and around 20 DVDs. As things are, I think I will continue this way.

I agree with prior posters, this article reads like a rant against Blu-ray with outdated, or just plain inaccurate information. It's unfortunate one has to look to the comments to find more accurate information.

I am not ok for DD for either games or movies. If I can't touch the disc I don't really own it. I can't resell them or lend them to a friend. I just like physical disks and I really doubt that is ever going to change. I know I am also not alone on this.

Also, Hulu and most on-line streaming sites look like crap. The definition is always just bad. I have a fast connection to. The better the shows get the more bandwidth they will eat up. I watch a lot of movies in 1080p as I love Blu Ray. If I could reliably get the movies in REAL 1080p with 5.1 Dolby Surround Sound they would eat up my bandwidth like Cookie Monster munching cookies. Anything less then that is just not good enough for me now that I have seen movies like Iron Man on Blu Ray.

quote:

Originally posted by GuitarAficionado:I agree with prior posters, this article reads like a rant against Blu-ray with outdated, or just plain inaccurate information. It's unfortunate one has to look to the comments to find more accurate information.

Yes it does. I also find it amusing that Ars NEVER does a real pro-Blu Ray article when the sales for it are through the roof as has been the case for the last several months with many releases of movies. For example, the Blu Ray Terminator: Salvation ( I don't care what anyone thought of the film ) took a total of 42% of total sales. That includes DVD sales. That is not a small figure. And it is NOT the only example either.

Originally posted by bash666:There are a couple of things that seem strange in this article. FIrst, new Blu Ray players are about $110, at least for entry level. There is no need to buy a refurb there. This is also helping move the sales of DVD and upconverting DVD players to Blu Ray - the cost difference is small. See, for example the Sony BDP-S360 ($129 at Amazon).

Yes, when the article mentions nonsense like:

quote:

Upconverting DVD players are swiftly becoming the norm.

it becomes obvious that this is a sour-grapes article. No one in their right mind is buying DVD now days. In fact go to your local big box store and you'll see the Blu-Ray disk section starting to take over the DVD section.

I can assume that the author has an HD-DVD that is now as useful as a 300 baud modem.

I don't even have Blu-Ray, but I'm glad it won the battle. It is much more useful and future-proof in general. HD-DVD would never have offered anything even close to 1 terabit data disks. And the extra density of Blu-Ray will help with 3D-on-disk, which is coming. Thank goodness we didn't end up with the HD-DVD dead end, even if a few intrepid journalists had to pay the price of investing in it.

Even though I don't have Blu-Ray, I just bought a Blu-Ray disk. The movie UP was available at Amazon for the same price in DVD and in Blu-Ray+DVD format, so I got the second one and got a Blu-Ray for free for whenever I upgrade.

Ignorant...

Spoken like a person who truly never owned either and sat on the sidelines speculating about something you had not taken part in.

HD DVD was truly the film lovers format. Then again the war was not won by film lovers, but gamers, (and shady back room deals). And it's apparent by how popular movies like Transformers are on the format. HD DVD was a friend to people who sought to watch movies from anywhere in the world. It had a finished spec and old players, while slow, were just as useful as the new ones. You're argument is spoken like someone who truly just sees the media as a storage space. Storage space should be the last thing on the mind of a film fan. HD DVD represented film freedom (at least as much as a format accepted by studios could be). Blu-ray still hasn't reached the feature set that HD DVD started with (and died with) and the restrictions on the media started out greater which won't change any time soon. Who cares if you can fit a bunch of worthless crap on a movie disc if you can't even watch it out of region or on a player that you spent a paycheck to afford. It's all a cosmic joke I think. Maybe just corporate pandering. Either way HD DVD didn't lose, the consumer lost.

It amazes me how VHS took such a long time to die, and DVD took a long time to really hit mainstream. Maybe VHS wasn’t fighting for existence, but the market kept it alive long after DVD was introduced. For those of us who got it, we REALLY got it; DVD, with its menu system and vastly superior (and un-degrading) video and sound quality, was the way to go—and it made a lot of scratch our heads watching our elders and peers stick with VHS for so long.

I kinda wish Laser Disc (sp??) was mentioned. Sure, the only traction it enjoyed came from schools, but it captured the imagination of a lot of geeks..Three criteria must be met before I go to digital distribution only:

1) The content I buy goes with me wherever I go; I can play it on as many devices as I want, as many times as I want, regardless of who owns the equipment.

2) Digital distribution provides “extras.” I’m that guy who went out and bought The Matrix, watched the movie, and watched it a second time—straight through—with the commentary track playing. I love that crap. So does my wife, and so do my friends and family. You simply don’t get that from other services (as much as I love Netflix Watch Instantly).

3) ISPs provide reliable broadband at or above 200MbPS at consumer prices. I do a lot video editing involving pictures that requires sending and receiving relatively large files (but don’t require torrents); I don’t want my hobby to be interrupted just because my wife decides to watch an episode of Grey’s Anatomy on Netflix—and I don’t want to disrupt her viewing experience either. On top of that, I use VOIP. As my family grows, I’ll have more people streaming multiple feeds thru the Internet, whether it be pictures, YouTube videos, music, or just calling a girlfriend or two (son, assuming—not me). I don’t want to sacrifice the quality of these other activities for the “convenience” of not owning physical media.

No; either way the consumer lost if either format kept on being popular.

The best thing that is going to happen is when Blueray sales dwindle down as people simply purchase the ability to watch any movie in a film catalog; a month at a time.

Like Netflix.. pay 9 bucks a month and get to watch any movie you want as much as you want whenever you want; for at least the titles that they have online streaming.

It'll be like that for everybody. The Music industry folks included.

Each big studio or licensing body will finally decide to cut out their retail partners and offer full access to their catalogs for subscribers. 70 years of music or movies fully accessible and open to the consumer to pick and choose from at any time.

No having to bittorrent movies. No having to compile large libraries of optical disks. No having to run 5TB's of storage. All you'd need is a internet connection and a subscription and you can watch whatever you want whenever you want.

The major problem for movie studios is that they actually lack the actual content. A heavy movie player with one of these services can pretty much blow through all the actually decent movies ever made in the past 20 years in a period of about 6 months. After that the studios will see people starting to drop their subscriptions due to just pure boredom.

Music services will fair much much better. People can listen to their favorite songs over and over and over again; and there is a huge amount of content and people making stuff that you can explore.

I mean... I just hook up with one of the 'creative commons' music services like "Jamendo" and you end up with literally a decade worth of music. You could set my media on random and play my music player and you could spend a year listening to music 24/7 and not have to hear the same song twice. Even if 95% of that stuff sucked it would still allow you a few months of 24/7 music listening.

All you really need is somebody to sort out all the crud, and that is really something worth paying a small monthly fee for.

And that is just some small fraction of the free shit that is out there.

Every music studio has decades and decades and decades of music just locked away. Never release it to the radios, never re-released albums for the vast majority of what they own copyrights for. All of it just sits there and rots away. If they converted that to digital and allowed people to listen to whatever they wanted through a subscription service then it would blow the mind of any music lover.

Movie studios could do that, but only to a much lesser degree. Unless your a huge movie buff, most of the stuff they own is really not worth your time to watch.

But online subscription services could really open up a whole new market of smaller studio features and serials as people troll around bored looking for new and interesting things to watch.

Magnatune offers:9591 songs with 26 days, 15 hours, and 55 minutes of play time. And they are a actual profit driven corporation.

Now if music studios offered subscription services for their entire catalogs then it would be probably several order of magnitude higher then that and with most of it with actual historical significance and be very listenable.

Originally posted by bash666:There are a couple of things that seem strange in this article. FIrst, new Blu Ray players are about $110, at least for entry level. There is no need to buy a refurb there. This is also helping move the sales of DVD and upconverting DVD players to Blu Ray - the cost difference is small. See, for example the Sony BDP-S360 ($129 at Amazon).

True to a degree. In the UK, Blu-ray players are currently going for as little as 80 GBP (approx $130 - and this includes the 17.5% sales tax/VAT).

However, upscaling, HDMI-enabled DVD players are available from around £30 (approx $48) - and the model I just saw on comet.co.uk includes DIVX playback and a USB port for external storage.

quote:

Originally posted by sideshowmI was comparing cherries with cherries, not apples with oranges. I can't think of a single movie that looks "crap" on BD and "great" on DVD.

Mmm. Apples and pears maybe: the real heart of the question is: can a DVD look as good as it's Blu Ray counterpart? Blu-ray obviously has the advantage of higher resolution, but this advantage is significantly dependant on screen-size/screen distance: the chart at http://carltonbale.com/home-th...e-theater-calculator shows that even on a 40" screen, the advantages of 1080p are significantly degraded by the time the viewer is over 5ft away!

(admittedly, I can quite easily see the aliasing on Xbox 360 games like Burnout Revenge on my 1080p 36" TV from about 10 foot away, but then: games involve hard-edged polygons rather than the "softer" edges of real objects)

quote:

Originally posted by t_newt:

quote:

Upconverting DVD players are swiftly becoming the norm.

it becomes obvious that this is a sour-grapes article. No one in their right mind is buying DVD now days. In fact go to your local big box store and you'll see the Blu-Ray disk section starting to take over the DVD section.

Um. Not in the UK at least: the main high-street retailer (HMV) has a DVD:BD ratio of about 10:1, as has the local Asda (Walmart) superstore. I've passed through both in the last week in an attempt to justify buying a blu-ray player (an attempt which failed miserably, at least in part due to the limited range of low-price "impulse buy" media. For instance, Asda are selling full TV seasons or movie boxsets for 10 GBP or less; there's significantly less choice in the BD section and the starting price for a single movie is also 10 GBP).

Then too, the article included a telling point:

quote:

From the article:JVC's format roared onto the market with a couple of distinct advantages, though. Chief among them was the ability to record two hours of NTSC-encoded video versus one hour for Betamax. American consumers seemed to be more interested in long recordings than good-looking ones

VHS, MP3, Digital TV (ye gods, the artefacting on some Freeview channels is atrocious), iPlayer (the audio quality is awful!), Youtube: one thing which has been proven time and time again that convenience and price are far more important to the mass market than quality. DVD offered a significant jump in both convenience and quality as compared to VHS, which helped it to get to the point of critical mass. BD offers extra quality but no improvements in convenience and the extra costs are therefore not justified in the mass market.

Oh, and to pick up the Minidisc thread which seems to have been spawned. I loved minidisc back in the day - my first Sharp player had 10+ hour battery life and worked flawlessly for several years of constant travelling - and then after sitting in a drawer for a year or two, worked just as well for a friend for a good while longer: as far as I know, he still has it and it's still operational!

My second (Sony) NetMD player was also a star: it supported the LP4 format (320 minutes per disc) and up to 56 hours of battery life off a single AA battery, at a time when state-of-the-art MP3 players were lucky to have 128mb of memory and 4 hours of battery life. Hell, 56 hours is still an impressive value today...

No; either way the consumer lost if either format kept on being popular.

The best thing that is going to happen is when Blueray sales dwindle down as people simply purchase the ability to watch any movie in a film catalog; a month at a time.

Like Netflix.. pay 9 bucks a month and get to watch any movie you want as much as you want whenever you want; for at least the titles that they have online streaming.

It'll be like that for everybody. The Music industry folks included.

I know that some day the streaming tech will allow for true 1080p with 5.1/7.1 Dolby Surround sound(or the equivalent). This is inevitable. But how badly do you think the ISP's will rape us, the consumers, for the bandwidth needed to stream these movies on a regular basis?

And by regular I mean like say, 20 movies a month or so. How much do you think they will charge for that kind of bandwidth?

20 Blu Ray quality movies would be around 400 GB(the average size for a Blu Ray movie being approximately 20 GB). Do you really think the ISP's will allow this? Do you think that their networks can handle it?

Do you think that they will want to without charging an arm and a leg for the service? Unless of course if the movies are sold from them the ISP's. And they will never, ever sell movies through a Netflix style catalog. Selling movies one at a time to the consumer is way to profitable for Comcast, for example.

No; either way the consumer lost if either format kept on being popular.

The best thing that is going to happen is when Blueray sales dwindle down as people simply purchase the ability to watch any movie in a film catalog; a month at a time.

Like Netflix.. pay 9 bucks a month and get to watch any movie you want as much as you want whenever you want; for at least the titles that they have online streaming.

It'll be like that for everybody. The Music industry folks included.

I know that some day the streaming tech will allow for true 1080p with 5.1/7.1 Dolby Surround sound(or the equivalent). This is inevitable. But how badly do you think the ISP's will rape us, the consumers, for the bandwidth needed to stream these movies on a regular basis?

And by regular I mean like say, 20 movies a month or so. How much do you think they will charge for that kind of bandwidth?

20 Blu Ray quality movies would be around 400 GB(the average size for a Blu Ray movie being approximately 20 GB). Do you really think the ISP's will allow this? Do you think that their networks can handle it?

Do you think that they will want to without charging an arm and a leg for the service? Unless of course if the movies are sold from them the ISP's. And they will never, ever sell movies through a Netflix style catalog. Selling movies one at a time to the consumer is way to profitable for Comcast, for example.

This comment was edited by axia777 on January 05, 2010 17:58

GREAT point. Everyone is so keen on the "convenience" that they don't factor in the risks. We already know that ISPs are constantly looking for ways to charge us more for less. We already know that ISPs are virtually synonymous with content providers—and that they become more so every year. We already know that American ISPs are dragging their feet in terms of upgrading their networks and maintaining existing networks to support existing customers.

Add to that the looming death of conventional cable, where everyone goes online for their content, and you’re looking at moving content from the cable box to the cable modem. What then? The average American household has, what, three TVs? How many of those TVs are currently hooked up to cable? How many have DVD/BD players connected to them? Take out the cable box AND the physical media, consider that you probably have at least two TVs streaming video content, and you’re looking at HUGE bandwidth spikes.

Oh, and the article mentions 3D tech. How much bandwidth is required to stream a 3D movie in 1080p with full 7.1 surround sound?

Who’s going to pay for all this? The ISPs? The gubment? China? It’s all the same: we are. And we’re going to pay for it big. If the majority of Americans don’t hold onto their physical content, the ISPs are going to become overloaded. And the ISPs are going to cry to Congress and the FCC about pricing, bandwidth management, and piracy. And by that time they’ll be justified.

I know that some day the streaming tech will allow for true 1080p with 5.1/7.1 Dolby Surround sound(or the equivalent). This is inevitable. But how badly do you think the ISP's will rape us, the consumers, for the bandwidth needed to stream these movies on a regular basis?

...

20 Blu Ray quality movies would be around 400 GB(the average size for a Blu Ray movie being approximately 20 GB). Do you really think the ISP's will allow this? Do you think that their networks can handle it?

Actually, using modern compression algorithms you can get pretty darn good looking HD with 5.1 surround for 4-6 Mbps - at least in the demonstrations I have seen with Siverlight things look pretty good. In fact, at 8 Mbps I would have had to do a still frame compare to see artifacts in the video. At 8 Mbps, that would only be about 7 GB per 2 hour movie. So 20 movies a month would be under the current 250 GB cap I currently have from Comcast. The problem would be at the head end, as you suggest, if every Comcast customer was pulling down 8 Mbps streams at the same time the head end would melt.

Thanks. I am just thinking about us the consumers and our pocket books. The ISP's love to dip into them so very much.

quote:

Oh, and the article mentions 3D tech. How much bandwidth is required to stream a 3D movie in 1080p with full 7.1 surround sound?

This is a great point too. I would love to know much bandwidth it takes to do so.

Anybody know?

quote:

Originally posted by Steve Sheldon:Actually, using modern compression algorithms you can get pretty darn good looking HD with 5.1 surround for 4-6 Mbps - at least in the demonstrations I have seen with Siverlight things look pretty good. In fact, at 8 Mbps I would have had to do a still frame compare to see artifacts in the video. At 8 Mbps, that would only be about 7 GB per 2 hour movie. So 20 movies a month would be under the current 250 GB cap I currently have from Comcast. The problem would be at the head end, as you suggest, if every Comcast customer was pulling down 8 Mbps streams at the same time the head end would melt.

You missed my point entirely. I don't want "pretty darn good" HD. I want true, full on 1080p with full Surround Sound. I already have it now with Blu Ray. Why would I want to go backwards in quality?

Though your point about the server/ISP end "melting down" is spot on. It would happen. Very badly in fact.

Physical media is great - especially when its contents are encoded digitally (the quality will never change like tape or vinyl). It doesn't require authentication with an external server or an internet connection to use (at least when we are talking about DVD and Blu-Ray). I can very easily lend physical media to or borrow it from friends, which I cannot do with streaming media due to DRM. Lastly, the current iteration of physical media always seems to have higher quality video and sound than the streaming variants. Sorry YouTube, but your HD videos are nowhere near the artifact-free 1080p video and Dolby TrueHD I get on my Blu-Ray discs.

Does everyone care about the better quality provided by physical media? No, but not everyone has to. There are still plenty of film buffs and hi-fi enthusiasts with decent systems who do appreciate the high quality of Blu-Ray over DVDs and streaming video, though. Likewise, decent size 1080p TVs are becoming much cheaper. As they make their way into the homes of consumers, the quality difference will become apparent.

Mmm. Apples and pears maybe: the real heart of the question is: can a DVD look as good as it's Blu Ray counterpart? Blu-ray obviously has the advantage of higher resolution, but this advantage is significantly dependant on screen-size/screen distance: the chart at http://carltonbale.com/home-th...e-theater-calculator shows that even on a 40" screen, the advantages of 1080p are significantly degraded by the time the viewer is over 5ft away!

I am agreeing with your point. But that question wasn't the heart of the matter. The question is more about if the difference is enough to justify the added costs associated with the move? Then, add on top of that, what you just said.

quote:

Originally posted by j00ce:

VHS, MP3, Digital TV (ye gods, the artefacting on some Freeview channels is atrocious), iPlayer (the audio quality is awful!), Youtube: one thing which has been proven time and time again that convenience and price are far more important to the mass market than quality. DVD offered a significant jump in both convenience and quality as compared to VHS, which helped it to get to the point of critical mass. BD offers extra quality but no improvements in convenience and the extra costs are therefore not justified in the mass market.

Everyone take note of this.

But I do have a problem with this. You assume that convenience is separate from quality. I disagree. Convenience is part of the quality of a product or service. What you meant to say is video and audio quality/fidelity as given by resolution (for example).

And finally,

quote:

Originally posted by sideshowm:

That's a sweeping statement. Healthy HDTV sales, BD sales and HD channel subscriptions suggest there is a market for extra clarity, and as prices drop that market will naturally grow.

I understand why you would think this. But Healthy HDTV sales are not a valid indicator. It seems like it, until you realize that most TVs in stores are HD TVs. I'm not sure I'd know where to go if I wanted to get an SD TV.

HD channel subscriptions is a good indicator, and I haven't seen any information about that. BD sales are not, however. They can still go up a lot and stall. Not that I'm saying they will.

Originally posted by Lobotomik:In Spain... <snip> ...I also think somewhere in the Blueray specs it is said that good movies cannot be made available in the format. A trip to the blueray aisle shows almost only high testosterone shit hits, or high glam ultrasweet romantic comedies. And the prices! They are outrageous, for the small benefit.

This must be a non-US thing. Pretty much every major release, and most of the minor ones, get a Blu-Ray release the same day as the DVD. Sometimes you see a holdout on it, but it's usually with a movie that you know they are going to be re-releasing on DVD at the same time as well probably, with more bonus features than the first edition.

My daughter screwed up my PS3 and we need to get it fixed, but my experience w/Blu-Rays has been that they do look very good, even on our 32". The PS3 did upconvert DVDs quite nicely too

I still like Netflix. It's the most comprehensive movie/tv source. You can get anything from Netflix by mail. All the streaming/download services are very limited. It's sometimes hard to find what you want.

If I like something so much I want to own it (infrequent), then DVD is still plenty sufficient for me. "Owning" something by downloading it is just not that great. Keep it on an internal HD with a high likelihood of failure? An external HD that will fail? A "cloud" service that may go bankrupt or take it back? Burn a DVD? Just buy the damn original DVD!

modern compression algorithms you can get pretty darn good looking HD with 5.1 surround for 4-6 Mbps

I really hope you are kidding.

Most 720p warez scene releases use bitrates >6Mbit/s for the video alone (add another 1.5Mbit/s for 5.1 DTS sound). And they use the most advanced H264 encoder available (x264). The encoders used by the studios are quite a bit worse.

No mention of the DVD Format War? That's a huge omission. It was fought with DIVX, and it was absolutely a scary touch-and-go thing for a while there. There was basically just one primary backer, Circuit City, and that was one of its death-blows (non-OAR, lower quality, non-ownership of content were all problems too).

It's important to remember that HD DVD also had only one major CES backer making the players (Toshiba), save for the LG dual player, and also heavily subsidizing releases. The Star Trek HD DVD set was paid for by Toshiba, and sold a paltry 2000 per specs about a month after release. And the format war ended right after there. There were other factors, but (a) knowing subsidies had to end some time, and (b) poor sales of a major release, certainly had Warner's eyebrows raised prior to them going Blu exclusive and ending the war.

Like some of the other readers, I was hoping for more then just VHS vs Beta and HD/DVD vs Bluray. I guess I could go to wikipedia for some extra reading.

Also, I personally have little to no interest in digital distro. When it comes to movies I want to own the physical media. As for music, even though everything ends up on the computer or ipod, I still want the disc (if I'm buying). Oh yeah...games...same thing.

Originally posted by Lobotomik:In Spain... <snip> ...I also think somewhere in the Blueray specs it is said that good movies cannot be made available in the format. A trip to the blueray aisle shows almost only high testosterone shit hits, or high glam ultrasweet romantic comedies. And the prices! They are outrageous, for the small benefit.

This must be a non-US thing....

Actually, it's just complete and total BS.

Almost every studio release is in both Blu-ray and DVD. I can only name one that wasn't this last year: Madea Goes to Jail. Every Best Picture nominee has a Blu-ray. And even indy movies like Sunshine Cleaning have Blu-rays (that one is $8.99 at Amazon).

quote:

Posted by drag:No; either way the consumer lost if either format kept on being popular.

The best thing that is going to happen is when Blueray sales dwindle down as people simply purchase the ability to watch any movie in a film catalog; a month at a time.

This is exactly why a mention of DIVX in the article was important! This is demonstrably incorrect.

Trends in VHS, DVD and Blu-ray sales have shown that people want to own movies. They do not want to have to pay to watch them every time -- via a per-use fee, or a monthly fee. DIVX died in part because that was their model, and if anyone wants to argue that DIVX was superior to DVD, good luck with that!

quote:

Originally by Axia777:[RE: 3D 1080p] I would love to know much bandwidth it takes to do so.

Anybody know?

Honestly, this isn't an answerable question, since there are several codecs and tons of different compression rates. That is, except to say that the new 3D Blu-ray spec says there will be a 30% to 50% bandwidth increase to add 3D (full 1080p to both eyes).

VHS, MP3, Digital TV (ye gods, the artefacting on some Freeview channels is atrocious), iPlayer (the audio quality is awful!), Youtube: one thing which has been proven time and time again that convenience and price are far more important to the mass market than quality. DVD offered a significant jump in both convenience and quality as compared to VHS, which helped it to get to the point of critical mass. BD offers extra quality but no improvements in convenience and the extra costs are therefore not justified in the mass market.

Everyone take note of this.

But I do have a problem with this. You assume that convenience is separate from quality. I disagree. Convenience is part of the quality of a product or service. What you meant to say is video and audio quality/fidelity as given by resolution (for example).

Actually, I was thinking that convenience and quality are (at least in the general commercial sense) inversely proportional to each other: the more convenient something is, the lower the quality is liable to be. A McDonalds burger is not going to be as nice as a burger made from a pound of fresh steak, but it's a lot quicker and easier to procure. The "free" MP3 player built into my mobile phone isn't as good as a dedicated iPod. A netbook isn't as good as a laptop. However, they're good enough - and significantly cheaper than the higher-quality alternatives.

If anything, it's something of a tripod akin to the old "quick, cheap, reliable: pick any two". Only here, it's convenience, quality and price.

Spoken like a person who truly never owned either and sat on the sidelines speculating about something you had not taken part in.

You actually sound the same yourself here. Obviously you were an HD DVD supporter and unhappy about the outcome. Let me try to balance your post a bit.

quote:

HD DVD was truly the film lovers format. Then again the war was not won by film lovers, but gamers, (and shady back room deals).

Sure, HD DVD was for film lovers. So was Blu-ray. Equally so, if not more so even, depending on what elements you focus on (region free for HD DVD, higher bitrates for Blu-ray).

In terms of shady back room deals, are you referring to Toshiba paying Paramount to go HD DVD exclusive in the summer before the format war ended? Yes, they payed Paramount. Specifically for the Star Trek transfer, and Paramount made no Blu-ray announcement until they were sure they were going to be payed.

And gamers did not win the format war (that is old AVS Forum HD DVD propaganda). The 360 had an HD DVD drive add on too. As the Ars article states, the PS3 was a good investment because it played games and Blu-rays, and cost the same as players that did only one of those. It wasn't gamers buying Blu-rays, it was people interested in both games and movies, or people who were simply interested in movies alone and wanting an inexpensive BD player.

quote:

And it's apparent by how popular movies like Transformers are on the format.

Not sure what your point is here. Transformers came to Blu-ray, and Transformers 2 -- crappy movie not withstanding -- is an absolutely stellar Blu-ray transfer (anyone want to argue DVD vs. Blu-ray quality needs to compare these).

quote:

HD DVD was a friend to people who sought to watch movies from anywhere in the world.

Indeed, it had no region coding. If that's your emphasis, then HD DVD was better.

Of course, I will go with bitrate and better potential quality on transfers. The aforementioned Transformers 2 stellar transfer would not have fit on an HD DVD.

In terms of region, I will note also that I have tried to purchase many anime titles, since Japan is in the US region. I have failed miserably because only a tiny percentage include either English subs or dubs. A huge disappointment. No region coding is still better, but don't assume that it guaranteed a watchable version for US audiences.

quote:

It had a finished spec and old players, while slow, were just as useful as the new ones.

Did it have 3D capability in the spec? Sounds unfinished to me then.

Also, every single Blu-ray player will play every single Blu-ray movie. So old players are just as useful as new ones in that regard.

And HD DVD players still required firmware updates.

quote:

You're argument is spoken like someone who truly just sees the media as a storage space. Storage space should be the last thing on the mind of a film fan. HD DVD represented film freedom (at least as much as a format accepted by studios could be). Blu-ray still hasn't reached the feature set that HD DVD started with (and died with) and the restrictions on the media started out greater which won't change any time soon.

Untrue. It has surpassed HD DVD. While it lacks region free, it has 3D capability, PiP, and remote play, allowing Daniel Radcliffe to start and stop my Blu-ray player in CA while he is talking to me from London (and yes, this really did happen).

quote:

Who cares if you can fit a bunch of worthless crap on a movie disc if you can't even watch it out of region or on a player that you spent a paycheck to afford. It's all a cosmic joke I think.

You cast HD DVD's superiority as a One Trick Pony: region free. You also ignore that the same "useless crap" was jammed on the lower capacity HD DVD discs that are jammed on Blu-rays. Any dual-format release had the same features on the discs, but were done to the lower common denominator, and often sacrificed bitrate to do so (Warner famously).

quote:

Maybe just corporate pandering. Either way HD DVD didn't lose, the consumer lost.

Sure, if you think region free is the be all end all of a format. But Blu-ray provides a much better film presentation when done right, has more features overall than HD DVD did, and had more than one company making players (again, the LG dual format was the only other).

3-Layer HD DVD was only a prototype. It was never deployed. It was also never stated or shown to be compatible with existed HD DVD players on the market (it most likely was not).

So the statement about 3 Layer HD DVD ends up being a major red herring.

As you know, I have complained about the anti-Blu-ray bias of Ars. While I very much appreciate the "3D Blu-ray" article a few weeks back, the kind of reporting in this article goes back to screaming bias all over again.

By the time 1TB of video storage isn't enough anymore, chances are that physical storage will be a bit player in the grand scheme of entertainment. All-digital distribution through media streams or downloadable files should be the standard before long, relegating physical formats to backup duties at best.

For digital distribution of films to take off, you need to be able to download a movie in under two hours (i.e. be able to stream it without buffering). 1TB of storage won't be enough when a film is >1TB. So, that's a _consistent_ download speed of 0.5TB/hour. A little maths and that's....

(drum roll)

1.1Gbit/sec (where 1Gbit = 1,000,000,000 bits)

Does anyone honestly believe that the majority of the population will have gigabit download speeds any time soon? Even in 20 years from now?

I thought about that as well, but as you say...

quote:

However, if we assume that movies will have bitrates of under 100Mbit/sec (2-3 times current Blu-Ray bitrates), then I can see it happening in 20 years.

The reality is that we'll never need close to Terabyte sized discs to deliver movie-length video and audio at a much higher resolution than our senses can differentiate on screen sizes that more than perhaps 5% of Americans can even fit in their homes, let alone afford.

I'm a huge consumer of digital distributed (DD) content form Netflix, PSN, and XBL (as well as Apple and Amazon a couple of times).

But at the same time I'm a consumer of Blu-ray as well. The very vast majority of my DD content is rentals and Instant Watch from Netflix.

I will NEVER buy a DD movie to own relative to current DRM and lack of freedom associated with those movies. I can't transfer my movie, can't give/sell my movie, can't even watch it on another device without tons of restrictions (all things I can easily do with a DVD/Blu-ray). So all my DD purchases have been cheap rentals.

If there's a movie I like, and I want to own, I buy Blu-ray, and more importantly I watch a ton of Blu-ray movies via Netflix (since most new/good movies aren't available via Instant Watch).

The fact is that how we view movies has changed, there is no hegemony of a single physical format, or Blockbuster rentals. Its STILL about physical media, but there are new services like Netflix, there are online movies via your browser, there are DD services via console.

Its not about format wars, its a about a diverse content delivery ecosystem. DD is absolutely horrible in many ways, its not the end-point of content distribution in the foreseeable future.

modern compression algorithms you can get pretty darn good looking HD with 5.1 surround for 4-6 Mbps

I really hope you are kidding.

Most 720p warez scene releases use bitrates >6Mbit/s for the video alone (add another 1.5Mbit/s for 5.1 DTS sound). And they use the most advanced H264 encoder available (x264). The encoders used by the studios are quite a bit worse.

No - it looks good at 4 Mbps - 1080p with 5.1 sound is at about 8 Mbps. And your bitrates for 5.1 sound are old (WMA Pro can do DTS 5.1 at 768 kbps). At 1.5 Mbps you would probably be unable to discern the difference between lossless 7.1 and WMA Pro 7.1. More information about the improve codecs here:

The big thing MS has done is improve the change in bitrates so that when your connector drops from 6 to 4 Mbps you don't notice much a of difference. The next generation of codec will drop the bitrate by another Mbps or so, thus it will be even more possible. But until the head ends are updated we cannot all be streaming 8 Mbps streams at once. So I should go first:-)

Originally posted by ringobob:The reality is that we'll never need close to Terabyte sized discs to deliver movie-length video and audio at a much higher resolution than our senses can differentiate on screen sizes that more than perhaps 5% of Americans can even fit in their homes, let alone afford.

Again, this is really just speculation. There's debate about the photographic megapixel barriers. There's debates about digital projection and what people can see on various screen sizes, including estimates as to what pixel resolution matches a 35mm negative. There's debates about close to a TV screen you have to be before you can tell the difference between various resolutions.

For example, I can easily tell between 720p and 1080i content, with the exception of well-encoded animation. And forget about DVD, even 720p is major step up, but this is partly because the color space for HD is larger than that of DVD.

So there is more to increasing resolution than just pixels! And the jury is still out across the board.

That said, we could some day move to a Terabyte per movie (compressed), is we throw a larger color space, more bytes per pixel and more pixels at it.

quote:

Originally posted by deckard_1:You forgot to mention something, VHS and Beta are still some of the only decent consumer video recording and storage systems.

In the US.

Japan has tons more technology, including Blu-ray recorders... which we likely never see in the US, sadly. Blu-ray was introduced about 2 years prior to the format war. It was a cartridge-based system (no emulsion layer) and record-only.

There's Blu-ray recorders with HDD capacity (record to disc, then transfer to Blu-ray). Similarly there's a lot more DVD recorders there too. Hollywood fights stuff like this because they don't like us recording, so the CE industry doesn't introduce it in the US.

quote:

Originally Posted by Steve Sheldon:And your bitrates for 5.1 sound are old (WMA Pro can do DTS 5.1 at 768 kbps). At 1.5 Mbps you would probably be unable to discern the difference between lossless 7.1 and WMA Pro 7.1.

No, this is wrong. There is a very discernable difference between lossless and 1.5mbps, particularly in the low and high ends. Bass response is far smoother, and there isn't going to be that "crackling" audio drop-out in the highs.

But if you have a mediocre sound system / speakers, you probably won't be able to tell. I have a nice sub, and some mid-range Polk speakers, and I certainly can... and I have Tinnitus!

quote:

...No - it looks good at 4 Mbps - 1080p with 5.1 sound is at about 8 Mbps. ...

The big thing MS has done is improve the change in bitrates so that when your connector drops from 6 to 4 Mbps you don't notice much a of difference. The next generation of codec will drop the bitrate by another Mbps or so, thus it will be even more possible. But until the head ends are updated we cannot all be streaming 8 Mbps streams at once. So I should go first:-)

Wow, at this rate, in a few years, Microsoft will be giving us AWESOME encodes at 0 mbps!

Everybody is making and using better encoders as time goes on, even the codecs used for Blu-ray are improving. But there is always a point of diminished returns. Also important to note that some things encode much better than others.

Good luck re-encoding a 1080p Star Trek with the fast motion and lens flares at 4 mbps. Or try this with a surfing movie, where the background is constantly changing. But hit Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex or any other clean cel animation with that, and you're probably dealing with something acceptable (though not as good as the original).

My point in stringing all these posts together is about quality. Compression leads to loss of quality. Period. Even with the best codec on earth, you compress to 4mbps 1080p, and you've got noticeable loss. Acceptable to some, maybe. But when compared to a 20mbps MPEG2 of LotR -- which I have on DVHS and is very, very good -- or a 20mbps H.264 of Star Wars, which I've seen, you are going to cause visible and audible damage to these when you cram them into a 4mbps pipe. That's an unnecessary sacrifice in quality, and something I will never support.

Pats his two JVC S-VHS decks, they still produce the best VHS picture quality I have ever seen from a consumer-level VHS deck, with image stabilizing TBC, noise removal, and user-level softening/sharpening to improve picture quality even more. I still use them today, although more for VHS restoration.

As for Blu-Ray, couldn't care less, and I really don't know anyone in my area who does.Like most around me, I own a lot of DVD movies, well over 260, including many special editions, and limited edition box sets. I don't plan, or can even afford to upgrade them. My DVD HDMI upscaler, running 720p, looks pretty good for DVD.

Even better, my HTPC Quad-Core Q9550, 4Gb, nvidia 9800GT, running Win7 and a tailor-made Avisynth upscaling script, a deblocker, a bit of grain removal, a good resizer for realtime, dehalo_alpha, and a bit of LSF for sharpening, and you have possibly THE best-looking DVDs you have seen yet. Obviously not in the same league as Blu-Ray, as you can't magically gain detail and resolution from nowhere, but it still looks amazing in realtime, and no need to do any lossy encoding as it's all done from the ripped vobs.

Originally posted by sideshowm I was comparing cherries with cherries, not apples with oranges. I can't think of a single movie that looks "crap" on BD and "great" on DVD.

quote:

Mmm. Apples and pears maybe: the real heart of the question is: can a DVD look as good as it's Blu Ray counterpart? Blu-ray obviously has the advantage of higher resolution, but this advantage is significantly dependant on screen-size/screen distance: the chart at http://carltonbale.com/home-th...e-theater-calculator shows that even on a 40" screen, the advantages of 1080p are significantly degraded by the time the viewer is over 5ft away!

No, the point I was making was that "the extra spiffiness" of BluRay is no garaunteethat the BD version will look any better than the DVD. The DVD doesn't have to lookany better. It's not selling any special expectations. It is the norm. A DVD is thestandard that you have to improve upon (rather than the other way around).

That's not even getting into whether or not the consumer cares or has the gear to see a difference.

Left out laserdics too. You know, the ones about the size of a vinyl LP. Of course that may not have been so much as a format war as just an alternative to the poor quality of tapes and it was out long before DVD. I think the first machines may have even been out in the late 70s, but I'm not sure.

Originally by Axia777:[RE: 3D 1080p] I would love to know much bandwidth it takes to do so.

Anybody know?

Honestly, this isn't an answerable question, since there are several codecs and tons of different compression rates. That is, except to say that the new 3D Blu-ray spec says there will be a 30% to 50% bandwidth increase to add 3D (full 1080p to both eyes).

-Pie

I had a feeling this was the fact of the matter. This only confirms my thought that Blu Ray quality streams are just a pipe dream for a foreseeable future, if not a decade or more from now. And then the next better HD format will be out by then to put down Blu Ray anyway in 4320p or some shit.

No the next format is between interlace and progressive. Many people even the author of this otherwise fine article doesn't understand it, and this means interlace is fighting hard for its life despite being the superior choice which is why it is fortunately still widely used.

Unfortunately many new TVs only support it partly and renders interlace like crap (probably one of the reason people think the format itself is bad). Still a format that supports either 540@60Hz or 1080@30Hz is objectively better than one that only support 1080@30Hz (yes 1080p @60Hz is technically better, but nothing support this, and nothing is released in it).

Originally posted by Thorzdad:I was always under the impression that Betamax lost to VHS due to Sony's expensive and restrictive licensing terms for the format, rather than any actual consumer "vote". Simply put, JVC licensed the bejeezus out of VHS and won by overwhelming numbers and much lower prices.

I, also, was under that impression. I was selling electronics when the Beta/VHS wars were going on. We had lots of different VHS machines from various manufacturers (Panasonic was big as I recall) but the only ones selling beta were Sony and Sanyo and Sanyo's reputation was crap.

Sony USED to be a really great electronics company. Their TVs were better than anyone else's, but were somewhat limited in screen size for a long time. Then they bought Columbia Pictures and the tail started wagging the dog. Ever since they've had this Binky and the Brain mentality of taking over the world. The HATED memory stick, UMD, root kits on CDs, etc. Back in the day I was quite proud that my whole stereo rack (including Betamax!) was Sony except for the speakers and phono cartridge. A few pieces were even high-end Sony ES. My TV was Sony, too, of course. Today the only piece of Sony gear I own is an old Digi-8 camcorder that I rarely use anymore. I used to worship Sony the way some fanboys worship Apple. I would make it a point to try to buy Sony whenever something needed replaced or upgraded. Now its just the opposite. I can't say I'd never again buy anything Sony, but I avoid it.

The lesson: If you work really hard at alienating your customers you will eventually succeed in driving them right into your competitors' arms.